


two and still counting

by ryeden



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Coma, Hallucinations, M/M, implied major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryeden/pseuds/ryeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo is a knight on a chessboard; he bends and he dances and he hears them laugh. The pistol is cold and unused, and every day the time gets a little fuzzier and he thinks he’s losing his mind. Then he’s screaming and tearing at his hair, spewing blood as black as his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two and still counting

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that The Outsider isn't a physical being, and that he can't touch people and/or objects. It's my favourite thing to mess around with (especially if he's simply seen as a hallucination).
> 
> Tell me what you think!
> 
> Title is from a Marble Sounds song, Two and Still Counting. Which is wonderful, by the way.

He is Corvo.

He is a sleeping tiger. He has a little girl that eliminates threats with greedy eyes and a twist of her fingers. Her name is Emily, he is her Loyal Protector. She is the reason to wake up early in the morning with a pistol cold under his pillow and fingers twitching. He feels his phantom limbs move, breathes in the rust and plague with his young lungs. The sun is as bright as his future.

She no longer needs his help, however. Her mind is ambitious and her eyes glow a bloody red. She tells Corvo to find a woman and live his life. Sometimes he thinks he’s dreaming.

The man visits in his mind, all black eyes and skinny wrists. His body is floating; his face is smooth as carved marble. His voice is of church-bells; teeth lined perfectly like barbed fences. Corvo is caught in his coma, spine folded comfortably against his hospital bed; eyes rolled into the back of his empty head.

“Why are you still asleep? I have given you all you need,” he says, confusion along the line of his brow, unnatural stillness in his limbs. The man sleeps on, oblivious, confined in origami-like skin.

Corvo is a knight on a chessboard; he bends and he dances and he hears them laugh. The pistol is cold and unused, and every day the time gets a little fuzzier and he thinks he’s losing his mind. Then he’s screaming and tearing at his hair, spewing blood as black as his eyes.

He looks at his reflection in the glass of whiskey and downs it.

It burns all the way down.

The man with cold black eyes manifests again, cleans a spot in the sleeping man’s mind; sits himself down like a king on his throne. His crown is a cacophony of screams; his mind is as fresh as daisies. He feels alive for the first time in years.

There is suffocating silence. The beeping slows. Corvo cannot feel the man in the corners of his mind; cannot feel the needle snug in his skin like a lover.

The man’s eyes are lightless and he waits. He cracks his bony knuckles; he traces lines into his paper skin. The skies are dull and the world is no longer interesting. He is immortal and immoral. He has lived for an age. His bones were so tired, his eyes longed to close.

He swallows; feels out the action, hears his heart beating for no reason other than simple habit.

He waits.

The seasons start over and the man continues to sleep. He breathes so easily, his face is so relaxed.

The man can’t remember how long it’s been.

Corvo’s hair has turned a dark grey; his skin is leathery and donned in a white gown. His hair curls around his chin and up along the pillow. It frames around the crown of his head like a halo.

The man thinks he is looking at an angel.


End file.
